A/N: This is my CS Secret Santa gift for the lovely nothingimpossibleonlyimprobable ! I hope you like it! There's two parts to this, and the first one is a bit more angsty, but the second is all fluff!

"Mom, can we get a Christmas tree to go in here?" Henry asked, bouncing up and down on the couch as Emma walked in with a bowl of popcorn.

"Right this second? I thought we were gonna watch Star Wars," she answered, teasing.

"No, but maybe tomorrow?"

"I don't think so, maybe next weekend," Emma said, and Killian looked on as she seemed to squirm.

"But its already getting close to Christmas, and if we wait any longer all the good trees will be gone!" Henry protested, oblivious to his mother's discomfort.

"Lad, I think your mother has other things she needs to do tomorrow, I doubt there will be time," Killian interjected, and Emma seemed at least slightly relieved.

"Fine," Henry said, dropping back into the couch and sulking for a split second before he reached for the remote and hit play, the prospect of Star Wars lifting his spirits again.

Emma held onto the bowl of popcorn as if it were a life raft for a moment, and then offered it to Henry and Killian, plastering a smile on her face and trying to get back in the mood for the movie.

"Love, is everything alright?" Killian asked as they folded back the heavy plaid duvet on their bed.

"Sure," Emma answered, without really thinking, as she sat down on the bed, clad in red flannel pants and white camisole.

"You just seemed a bit uncomfortable when Henry brought up the Christmas tree," Killian continued after a moment, his fingers toying with a loose thread at the corner of the duvet. "And you don't seem to be as Christmas spirited as the rest of your family has become."

Emma shrugged, looking down at the blue blanket.

"I'm just not that into Christmas, that's all," she said quietly, without looking up at him.

"Emma…" he pressed as he sat down on the bed next to her, he needed to understand this.

"It's just… the whole orphan thing. I never really… got Christmas as a kid," Emma sighed, looking up at him with a sad sort of smile. He gave her an encouraging and sympathetic look, so Emma went on. "It's just that, as a kid in foster care, you don't really get any of it. The foster homes didn't really decorate and we definitely didn't get presents from them, and nothing was really ever different during the holidays, except in some of the houses it was a lot colder because the heating didn't work so great." Now that she had started talking, she couldn't keep everything in anymore, as it so often happened with her conversations with Killian. "But I still went to school and we made snowflakes and wrote letters to Santa, only Santa never came to my house, and the thing with Santa is that if he doesn't come, you think its because there's something wrong with you, because you misbehaved or just weren't good enough in general and it really messes with your head, 'cause everyone else gets them but you."

"When we were in the service of the captain my father sold us to, Liam and I, we never really knew when it was Christmas," Killian shared, looking straight ahead of him, as if he were seeing the rocking boat rather than the bedroom wall. "Liam was allowed to go ashore at ports sometimes, so he usually tried to find out when it was about Christmas, but we hardly ever knew for sure. And we had no money for gifts, everything we had we were saving to buy our freedom, and to buy commissions. One year, Liam did some favour for an innkeeper, and she rewarded him with two drumsticks from her Christmas turkey. Of course, he wished to share them with me, so he tried to sneak them onto the ship, but the captain caught him, took the drumsticks for himself of course. Bloody fool should've just eaten them at the inn while he had the chance."

Emma knew what he was doing, of course. It was not a competition, who had the sadder story, but it was a way of saying that he understood, without pitying her.

"Do you have no happy memories of the holidays, Swan?" he asked, turning to her with a curious and heavy smile.

"Some, I guess," she said after considering for a moment. "The year I was with Ingrid, it was pretty good. She went all out, tree, presents, cookies out the wazoo. It wasn't long after that I ran away though. And of course, I didn't remember that year for most of my life." Emma smiled wryly, thinking about Ingrid and all that had happened with her. "There was another year too, I was with this family, and they were great. They didn't celebrate Christmas though, they were Jewish, so we did Hanukkah that year. But they got me presents and taught me to make latkes and let me be included in all their family traditions. They took pictures with me like I was going to be a permanent part of their family. That was… that was probably the best year, holiday-wise."

Killian nodded when she was finished with her story, and then leaned over and pressed a kiss to her temple, feeling her smile slightly. They said their goodnights and shimmied down further into the bed, curling up together, and as they drifted toward sleep, an idea began to form in Killian's mind.